Six of my “Uncle BAM!” graphics were on display at the International Art Summit in Miami, FL during the month of October, 2011. Well received by other artists and critics alike. Proof that there are still plenty of people at large who are into a call for the truth and and who resonate with voices … graphic or audio … that cry out for real justice.

Well, it’s going on ten full years since the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center in NYC came crashing down. Nearly ten full years to the day … September 11, 2001 … since a huge hole was punched into an outer wall at the Pentagon and one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated on humanity was steamrollered into the American mind-set.

What exactly is the hoax? The hoax is that this marvelously orchestrated and maliciously engineered series of diabolical events was the work of a band of Mickey Mouse Muslim saboteurs with nothing more than a handful of box cutters and a few half-assed flying lessons in light single engine airplanes or flight simulators.

It is the hoax that was authored by power players and politicos in high government offices contaminated with self interest and personal ambition at the expense of the American population. It is the hoax that was endorsed by major corporate interests with war profiteering policies and absolutely zero consciences. It is the hoax that was adopted as gospel by huge factions of the military machine with a greedy eye towards world domination. It is the hoax that was echoed by lackies in the media: newspapers, television and pro-administration cyberspace. It is the hoax that was sold to the American public with high grade Madison Avenue technologies. It is the hoax that was repeated over and over, louder and louder, bigger and bolder until it became accepted as reality by billions of Americans and a good many people in other parts of the world as well.

It is the hoax that on September 11, 2001 catastrophic war crimes of sabotage were commited in New York City and Washington DC by a handful of inept fanatical dreamers from the Middle East and not by Uncle BAM right here in the USA!

As a result of those catastrophes, The US has become embroiled in two lengthy and costly wars which have taken the lives of countless thousands; destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands more; dealt a shattering blow to our American economy and more than likely has played the first few bars of Taps for the Age of Petroleum. As inevitable as that may be.

As a result of those catastrophes, millions of lives have become diminished in scope and in the hope for a reasonable persuit of life, liberty and happiness. Millions of lives made miserable in the United States as well as in the Middle East. Millions of lives … sacrificed for the material betterment of a relatively few.

For the material betterment of Uncle BAM!

And, now, on the eve of the 9-11 catastrophe’s tenth anniversary, while we are all being subtly programmed to molly-coddle our justifiable rage with sentimental sugar coated “rememberances for the victims” … while we are all being sold by the media on the idea of ” thankfulness” because the so-called evil mastermind, Osama Bin Laden has finally been snuffed and … while under this security blanket of bullshit we, as American citizens, are conned into thinking that we’re on the threshold to final closure, the hoax continues!

The hoax continues. “Muslim madmen did it!”

The hoax continues. “And, they’ll do it to us again if we don’t watch out!”

The hoax continues. “And, the only answer to this threat is more defense spending!”

Uncle BAM is making billions every day by keeping the hoax alive. “Muslim madmen did it and, by God, we’re not gonna let it happen again”! Uncle BAM is raping the economy by continuing phoney wars fueled with fear against a phantom enemy. “Either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists”. Uncle BAM knows that the “war on terrorism” can never be won. For good reasons or bad, there will always be groups who resort to terrorist means to accomplish their ends.

Uncle BAM also knows that most terrorist activity in the world today is extrememly regional and strives to accomplish goals with very little direct impact on the national security of the United States. But, Uncle BAM doesn’t want American citizens to know this. So Uncle BAM either exaggerates or even orchestrates terrorism to keep the level of fear high and the level of resistance to “defense spending” low. As far as objections to the usurping of freedoms that were guaranteed in the Constitution … Uncle BAM wants to convince you that those objections are unpatriotic!

Uncle BAM is the personification of the Industrial/Military/Congressional complex that lives and thrives off war profiteering.

The chances are pretty good that, in one form or another, there was a muslim extremist plot afoot to fly hijacked planes into prominent American buildings like the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and maybe even the Capitol or the White House to make some sort of glorious statement for their cause.

The chances are pretty good that this information reached the perpetrators of the ultimate hoax. Perpetrators who realized that a) this laughable plot could never succeed due to the network of security that was in place at the time and b) even if the saboteurs were successful in hijacking planes and by some outrageous miracle were actually able to fly them into their targets, the subsequent crashes, fires and murderous mayhem would be awful, but would never have the impact on the nation to stay in the headline news for more than a few days or justify a legal … or illegal … declaration of war.

And Uncle BAM wanted a war! Uncle BAM wanted to invade Iraq. Uncle BAM wanted to get his hands on all that Iraqi oil and establish a strong military presence in the Middle East. Uncle BAM wanted to run a pipeline from Kazakistan across Afghanistan and into the huge refineries in Pakistan to sell all that oil to the exploding markets in India and China. But, Uncle Bam’s ambition was being threatened by Afghani warlords and other unreliable regimes in the region. Also, Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, was being very uncooperative in his oil dealings with the US. For sure, he had to go. Uncle BAM’s solution was simple. Declare war, inject a huge military presence into the Middle East, dominate the area and be in control of it all! All he needed was a good reason for war!

For that to happen, Uncle BAM had to have an incident comparable to Pearl Harbor. A tragedy of mind boggling proportions. The hijacked planes would have to wiggle through American air security. The hijackers would have to avoid contact with NORAD F-16s that could be scrambled and in defensive position within mere minutes of the first signs of a commercial airplane flying off course or cutting radio contact. And, most importantly, the sabotage would have to be destructive on a far more gigantic scale! Knocking a corner off a skyscraper or starting a two or three story fire fed by jet fuel wouldn’t be destructive enough. No! The hijackings would have to be successful in the first place; the destruction would have to be mind boggling in the second place and, finally, in the third place, the blame would have to be convincingly pasted on the patsies.

Obviously, this could only be accomplished with a lot of help from Uncle BAM!

Which brings us back to the Tenth Anniversary of the 9-11 Hoax. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, after ten years of being saturated with the stuff and nonsense of the official scenario, most Americans are still taking this hoax to heart.

The hoax that Osama bin Laden commissioned a handful of ideological muslim fanatics during the late nineties to start a sleeper cell in the US and go learn to fly little airplanes (which they never really did) and then, make the fantastic leap from inept flight students to accomplished jumbo jet pilots in only one short week, fly them hundreds of miles over a strange country by eye and crash them into targeted buildings in far away cities as bombs.

The hoax that this feat was accomplished not once, but three times … scant minutes apart … with the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on 9/11/01.

The hoax that jet fuel which burns at about 1800 degrees Farenheit could not only effect structural steel which begins to soften at nearly 3000 degrees after continued exposure to the heat source for hours, but, would actually pulverize the structure as well as the offensive jet planes. And, this after less than a half hour of exposure before the walls came tumbling down.

The hoax that still claims jet fuel as the cause for all that destruction even though traces of military thermite which does burn at temperatures that can melt steel and pulverize concrete were found by independent scientific study at the World Trade Center. Information you’ll never get on the major news channels.

The hoax that both Twin Tower buildings would naturally collapse into their own footprints at nearly freefall speed because of structural damage due to fire in the upper levels even though this idea has been totally disproved by independent scientific and engineering agencies all over the world. (This information, also, is not generally available to the American public.)

The hoax that a jumbo jet was brilliantly piloted in a descending 270 degree downward spiral from a flight altitude of thirty odd thousand feet to a half dozen feet above ground level (by looking out the window!) and without touching the Pentagon lawn, crashed into the building at about four hundred miles an hour. Piloted by who? By a muslim kid who couldn’t even do a successful solo go-round in a Cessna 150 at a wide open private airport from a height of about five thousand feet several weeks before.

The hoax that a 757 with a total width of 124 feet and a height of 44 1/2 feet smacked into the Pentagon’s outer wall and made a hole only about 16 to 20 feet wide without any major traces of wreckage and then … POOF! … was vaporized forever. Just like the planes earlier that morning in NYC.

The hoax that the 9-11 Commission was an agency established to get to the truth of these catastrophic events and not a ploy by Uncle BAM to whitewash the investigation of events, dispel real blame and allow the profiteering of the subsequent wars to continue into the unforseen future.

That’s the hoax, folks. Or, at least, the tip of the iceberg. And, Uncle BAM is at the borrom of it. Be warned. Whenever you hear a politician, a general, a celebrity or a talking head on the tube or in the papers muttering about how bin Laden, or Al Qaida, or any other Mickey Mouse terrorist organization with home made explosive devices and out of date light infantry equipment pulled off the most complicated and sophisticated sabotage mission in history, be warned.

John Boehner made a sorry spectacle of a speech before the American public … presenting his case for the crisis revolving around the debt ceiling last week. Of course, the proposition that his plan calls for a debt reduction of 1.2 trillion dollars over the course of time…. over the next ten years … is ludicrous. No one can tell what future congresses will do or not do and that includes budget planning. Certainly, Boehner has no control over the future and laws can come and go on the Congressional floor like the wind. So, this “plan” is just so much rhetoric. The politician’s stock in trade.

But, what I want to talk about is what Boehner never mentioned in all his calls for spending cuts. The one budget Boehner … and, for that matter, many congressmen on both sides of the aisle … skirted is the most over blown and inefficient major government spending fiasco on the board. Hello, Military spending! Hello, Stuffing the infinitely deep pockets of Uncle BAM!

In 2011, military spending amounted to 58% of all federal discretionary spending. We have a greater budget for military expendidtures than all the other countries of the world combined! Yet, not a word was mentioned about these exhorbitant expenditures in considering the deficit and proposing budget cuts.

Expenditures, I hasten to add, bloated with waste, incompetence and curruption. In 2009, for instance, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found nearly 300 billion dollars in cost overruns regarding just about 70% 0f 96 major weapons systems. The bills just keep on pouring in … originally approved and authorized or not. And the checks go out!

“Corruption?” Isn’t that spelled, “Uncle BAM!”?

In a vain attempt to clear some of this up, the Government Reform Act had been passed in 1994. The Act required the Inspector Generals of all Federal Agencies to audit and publish financial statements. But, The Pentagon never complied. There hasn’t been a complete audit of the Pentagon in over fifteen years! Going back to 2002, Donald Rumsfeld admitted, “We cannot track 2.3 trillion in transactions”. Two point three trillion! Incidently, Congress responded to this sorry state of affairs by granting the Pentagon absolution and allowing it to opt out of the financial report mandate. Enough Congressional leaders voted to keep actual military costs out of the public eye for a very good reason. A lot of that money gets plowed right back into the rear door of congress!

Uncle BAM! is only stupid when it pays to be stupid.

AH! But, war profiteers, their political partners, psudo-patriots and the great poorly informed will all cry in unison, “Oh No! We must never cut expenditures for national defense !” National defense?

Cock-a-mamie crisis and phoney foes aside, let’s take a closer look at military spending. How much is actually necessary and how much more is pure pork plain and simple. Then, we’ll review why politicians like John Boehner keep this exhorbitant money pit away from public view.

The bottom line is: War profiteers are intent at perpetuating two things: War and Profits! Wars, these days, are perpetuated by crying, “Wolf!” when the wolves are wishlist exagerations. Profits are perpetuated by selling stuff to the Pentagon regardless of whether it is necessary stuff or not. Planes that were designed for the old Cold War between us and the USSR are still being manufactured and shoved down the military’s throat even though their usefullness is null in the wartime theaters of today. The same thing is true about aircraft carriers. Designed to deliver death far inside the Iron Curtain, they are now very costly and inappropriate for the new trends in military encounters … hit and run gorilla attacks. Yet, new carriers are on the books at a cost of staggering billions a pop. Add these two obvious items to the mind boggling amount of supplies, parts, and malfunctioning equipment that winds up paid for and shipped to military warehouses all over the world and you have billions and billions of dollars annually going up in smoke.

Why? Because somebody is making lots and lots of money. Uncle BAM! is raking it in. How can that be? Here’s how: The corruption side of the coin includes politicians in Congress who squeeze military expenditures as earmarks into bills with completely other purposes and high ranking generals or admirals in the active military with an eye on lucrative consultant or defense industry jobs after retirement. The brass buddies up to big time defense contractors as a matter of course. As examples, from 2004 to 2008, about 80% of three and four star officers … admirals or generals … became employed in the defense industry as either top executives or consultants. Of, course we’re looking at serious conflicts of interest here, since most of these jobs are promised before they leave the military.

Congressmen or Congresswomen who use earmarking to fund defense industry contracts in their districts are on the recieving end of huge donations to their election treasuries as well as gifts and other perks. They often argue that the employment these contractors provide for their constituents is good for the economy … even if they are ineffective at actually adding to our national security in the military sense. That’s a cop out! Recent studies have shown that if the same amount of money spent on needless military contracts was pumped into these same districts for green jobs, for energy efficiency jobs, for infrastructure jobs or for education the money would actually create more jobs for more people. So, why don’t they do it? Because those wasteful, incompetent and corrupt money making mechanisms are already in place. That’s Uncle BAM!.

July 18th saw a changing of the guard in Kabul. General David Patraeus turned over command of military forces in Afghanistan to Four Star Marine General John Allen. The transition was formalized at a meeting of international military top cats in Afghanistan’s capitol and the media heralded it as an advance in the progress of bringing peace to that ravished part of the world.

Well, let’s take a closer look at what’s happening over there. Of course the military brass is still playing the same role that’s been going on for ten years … all we really need for “victory” is more time, more soldiers and more money.

Victory? Against who? And, more money? For what? To hear Allen tell it, “When we have completed the work of this campaign, Afghans will be in the lead in security across this nation.” (He’s setting up a scenario that makes it look like the Afghanistan people are at war with some sort of outside element.) “But”, he added, “we will remain an innovative, agile, and responsive security force as the campaign evolves”. Nice loop hole. Of course, by “Afghans” Allen is talking about the Afghan politicos who are compatible with American and European (to some extent) corporate interests in the area and not … I repeat, “not” … with the interests of the average Afghan in the street. And by saying, “… as the campaign evolves” … he opens the door to being there forever and to achieve it’s real on-going purpose: Establishinbg dominence in the Middle East and control of the region’s resources.

We got a taste of that during the time when Patraeus was in charge. His job? Always spouting promising pronouncements and always not delivering much in the area of actually accomplishing what government has been selling to the American people. Or, for that matter, what government has been selling to the troops in the field.

Consider this: Patraeus was in charge of bringing tens of thousands of troops into Afghanistan in the movement that was called the surge. His report to the American public? “Progress is being made.” Big deal! A 15% increase in public deaths. The count was up to 1,462 half way through this year. A lot of those fatalities were because of Special Operations night raids where (oops!) the wrong civilians were beaten and murdered while their houses were burned down. Why? Because of so-called faulty intelligence that turns out to be a tip to the army from someone with a grudge against his Afghani neighbor. The army is averaging about three hundred of these night raids every month. Guess who’s paying the gas bill.

“Progress is being made”? Taliban recruiting is more successful than ever. Nearly all the recruits these days are Afghani citizens. Not “insurgents” creeping over the border from Pakistan. Why? Because indiscriminate bombings, beatings and bullyings by well armed American kids who have had their heads brainwashed with bullshit is not a good way to make friends and influence people.

But, the army gets to use its very, very expensive killer toys. And, sadly, many people in the Afghanistan countryside are now more afraid of the Americans than of the Taliban.

Still, in reality, “government” is the wrong word for all of this. In reality, it’s the aspect of the governing machine … the industrial/military/congrssional complex which I call “Uncle BAM!”. Uncle BAM is running the show. And, for Uncle BAM, peace is the last item on the agenda.The War is making Uncle BAM mind-bogglingly rich!

So far, the Treasury of American tax dollars has been raped for more than a trillion dollars to pay for the military operations in the Middle East since 2001. 747.3 billion in Iraq. 299 billion in Afghanistan. And, now, congress is considering another 37 billion to go along with the136.8 billion already allocated for the rest of this year. Where does that money go? It goes to big business. It goes to the guys who make and sell the planes, the bombs, the bullets and the band-aids. It goes to the guys who build the bases, bribe the locals and bum out the soldiers. Right into the infinite pockets of Uncle BAM!

That’s American dollars that could go for a workable universal health care program. But, it goes to Uncle BAM!

That’s American dollars that could be given to good public safety programs. But, it’s given to Uncle BAM!

That’s American dollars that could be paying for the development of efficient energy programs. But, it’s paying Uncle BAM!

That’s American dollars that could be funding affordable housing.But, it funds Uncle BAM!.

Fifty five hundred killed so far. They didn’t die for liberty. They died for Uncle BAM! Tens of thousands wounded. They weren’t scarred for freedom. They were hurt for Uncle BAM! Uncle BAM is a pricey puppet master! Marine suicides doubled between 2006 and 2007. Army suicides are at the highest rate since they started keeping records in 1980. Down where the bullets fly and the blood stains dry … more and more boots know that the “war” is immoral and unjust. They just don’t believe it’s for humanitarian purposes any more.

Yet, this killer cash flow machine continues to crank along. Patraeus waved the false flag of optimism over this operation for just about a year as commander and for some time before that as an Army spokesman. Nothing’s any better. Some things are even worse. And the price is going up. But now he gets to become Director of the CIA. What does THAT tell you? It tells you that Uncle BAM takes care of his own.

I’m reminded of the words of another Marine General.

Brig. Gen. Smedley Butler, in his great and best selling anti-war book “War Is A Racket”, he said, “I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.”

Butler retired from the Marines and went on to become a prominent spokesman against the very same things that are going on in the Middle East today.

Michele Bachmann is actually beginning to be taken seriously as a candidate for the presidency by too many folks who are trapped in the Military/Industrial/Congressional Complex mind-set. Hypnotised by “Uncle BAM!” Hypnotised, of course, with considerable help from right wing media streams that are fed by war profiteering. The myth persists: Somehow, the “good” … “keeping America safe” … outweighs the “bad” … outweighs the deceit and WMD bullshit which drove our nation into a stupid, senseless, very illegal and very costly war. Ten years of war and still counting! Why? Because Uncle BAM creates and capitalizes on fear. Fear of an enemy or national threat! No matter if it’s real or not. That’s the game. And the game goes on.

But, Bachmann isn’t the problem. She’s a symptom of the problem. Her growing popularity is a symptom that reflects the thinking of (maybe) enough people to put serious war profiteers like the international corporate giants which fund these campaigns further into the pilot’s seat. Her negative vote … along with so many others … against prosecuting Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, Wolfowitz and all the other war criminals who fostered the last ten years of mass murder and mayhem in the Middle East casts a sinister shadow across the contemporary campaign-scape. It casts a shadow which suggests that patriotism is well served by a blind eye toward morality and denial is an effective antidote to truth. An attitude which she believes is popular enough to gain meaningful votes on the campaign trail.

She could be right. But for all the wrong reasons. She could be right because so many people are conditioned into believing that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were justifiable actions. And, that the incredible and inflated costs are acceptable for our national security. And, that a bloated national defense budget is a necessary factor. It is a necessary factor, alright. Necessary to feed the Military/Industrial/Congressional Complex that dips into the National Treasury and sucks up mind boggling amounts of tax dollars. Necessary to feed Uncle BAM! We’re talking about tax dollars that could be providing better education for Americans. Tax dollars that could be funding a real honest to goodness National Health program. Tax dollars that could be re-building our crumbling infrastructure, creating green jobs, establishing workable alternative energy sources and strengthening our economy.

But, no! Uncle BAM! gets his share and more. Much more. Much more because of the notion that equates security with spending … even for projects that never get off the drawing board or into production. After all, it’s not about designs. It’s about dollars. It’s not about morality. It’s about money. War is always profitable for the machine that promotes it and gets paid for it. The trick is to give that insideous mechanism an identifiable face. The trick is to give those murderous merchants a name. Then we can point at it. Then we can condemn it. Then we can take steps to control it.

It has a face. It has a name. It’s “Uncle BAM!”

Will Michele Bachmann or any other psudo-patriotic politician be so willing to play ball with war profiteers when they can be easily labeled as partners-in-crime with … “Uncle BAM”?

I drew this cartoon as the kick-off to my “Uncle BAM!” anti-war series just about ten years ago. “We won in Afghanistan?” Not hardly. After all the mass murder ,money and misery, here’s what the most recent UN quarterly report has to say:

1. Violence up 51% since this time in 2010.

2. Civilian casualties up 20% since last year. That’s 1,090 dead and 1,860 wounded. Add to that a 4% rise in displaced persons … 435,000 people bumming around the boondocks and trying to survive with disrupted lives! And what do you get? You get the same old story. Time after time, year after year. So the recent “Surge” and all those sorry soldiers sweating it out in that hell hole has proven to be one more unsuccessful turn on the military merry-go-round. That’s if … IF … winning the war was or is the ultimate aim. IF … victory is how you measure success.

Follow the dollar, folks.

The military/Industrial complex needs to feed. It needs to promote the idea of a threat, valid or not, into the mind-set of the American public and, then, present military solutions to counter the threat. That’s what Uncle BAM! does. Keeps the gears of war turning and keeps the dollars rolling in.

So, ten years after the initial invasion of Afghanistan it’s still a magnificent money maker for the war profiteers who buy the legislators who make the rules and leverage the laws to stimulate the fat cat contracts that enrich the few and kill the many. “BANG”, go the bullets! “BAM” go the bombs! “KA-CHING” go the cash registers. And with all that noise, who hears the whimper and feels the anguish of the 435,000 people ousted from their lives this year? Who stops to mourn the 1,090 who died? Who pauses for a moment to consider the 1,860 sliced with shrapnel, scarred with burns, amputated by IEDs or simply shot with good old fashioned bullets?

Not Uncle BAM!

Not Raytheon. Not General Dynamics. Not ATK.

They’re too busy capitalizing on phoney fear and dreaming up weapons systems for the good of the corporate coffers.

Consider the APMI program. APMI: The Accelerated Precision Mortar Initiative, a project that cost us tax payers 1.1 billion bucks but was always considered to be ineffective in today’s combat situations and was always considered to be counter productive in that there was always a fear that(precision or not) collateral damage would still have a negative impact on the use of these weapons. Plus the hardware was always too damn heavy to schlep around by boots on the battlefield.

Yet, although it appeared pricey, the plan was to come up with a high powered mortar round (120 mm) with a GPS guidance system guaranteed to decrease the 136 meter margin of error down to about 10 meters in hitting a target.

“That way”, say the promoters, “it will only take two mortar shots to knock out a sniper or a bunker instead of the usual eight to ten rounds. Rounds? At $605.00 a pop, we were looking at, maybe, six thousand dollars or over to kill some poor son of a bitch who is trying to rid his country of foreign invaders. (Us.) But, with the new system, using GPS guided 120 mm mortars, the cost per shot would not only be many times greater, but, the start-up program would be over a billion dollars all by itself.

Certainly not cost efficient. But, that’s OK. We paid the money, tested the system. It didn’t come up to the promoters’ wild promises and guarantees. And, the plan was scrapped. The NLOS-LS (Non Line Of Sight Launch System) was cancelled April 27, 2010.

But, the tax payers never get their money back. And very few complain because most keep on thinking that maybe something is out there that’s going to “get” them. The Taliban. Al Qaida. Iranian warmongers. Communists. Something. And we need a lot of expensive things that to BAM to keep us all safe.

“Panic the public and pile on the profits!”

Of course it doesn’t make sense.But, there’s never any logic to the war game. Not if you’re thinking about so-called good guys versus so-called bad guys. There’s only logic if you’re making money with the game.